Artificial Intelligence is fast taking over every aspect of human life, gaming included. Xbox has even committed to an AI-driven future, with new Microsoft Gaming CEO Asha Sharma recently having to come out and clarify that the company won’t “flood our ecosystem with soulless AI slop” following backlash from Xbox fans. Anti-AI sentiment in gaming couldn’t be much higher at the moment and it appears as though an iceberg is coming for the industry.

AI Slop and Vibe Coding Could Destroy Gaming

AI slop is, indeed, soulless. It’s something that even the higher-ups at gaming’s biggest companies recognize. Yet it’s crept into gaming over the past few years with very little being done about it.

The most damning statistic is that 1 in 5 Steam games released in 2025 used generative AI, up nearly 700% year-on-year. This hasn’t gone unnoticed by the players, either, with countless Reddit users practically begging Steam to up their quality control or separate AI games into different categories. Steam does at least require AI game disclosure tags on its titles, but it ultimately doesn’t stop AI games from mixing with genuine ones, much to the frustration of users.

It’s gotten so bad that even some indie releases, which gamers used to be able to trust with their lives, have started using AI. Off the back of this, a growing number of indie game developers are now banding together around an “AI-free” seal to demonstrate that their releases contain absolutely no generative-AI assets so that they can maintain consumer trust. However, even when a new indie game claims to be AI-free, the growing feeling among gamers now is that you can just never be sure.

Then there’s the problem of vibe coding, which is when developers rely on AI to generate code based on prompts, allowing AI to handle the actual technical side of the game development. Essentially, anyone can create a video game now and it’s a serious problem. It was only last week when game developer and technical artist Freya Holmér shared a clip of a unique Tetris-style game she had been working on, which quickly surpassed 2 million views on X, only for other developers to start creating “bad clones” of her concept just a few hours later, which saw Holmér label them as “slop ghouls”.

AI Has Caused the RAM Crisis and Job Losses

Gaming’s AI-fuelled memory shortage crisis is also strangling the industry.

The rapid expansion of AI data centers has caused a RAM shortage and existing prices to skyrocket, which is why gaming hardware seems to have gotten even more expensive over the past couple of years.

There’s no end in sight for the ongoing shortage either, with RAM prices set to surge an extra 30% in 2026, something that many tech outlets are labelling “RAMmageddon”.

And while all this has been going on, job losses have also spiked in the gaming industry following the rise of AI.

45,000 gaming employees lost their jobs between 2022 and 2025, plenty of studios are closing, and up to 10,000 more jobs could be at risk in 2026.

CEOs see potential in AI on paper, which is why they continue to gut workplaces, but the reality of AI is that most gamers are against it and that mass layoffs are unlikely to achieve anything except short-term cost cutting.

It’s not a pretty sight for what was once a thriving industry pre-COVID and it’s even led to junior developers, who were once the heartbeat of the gaming industry, relying on “seniors do (all) the work” according to a veteran developer at Xbox who recently spoke to Wired.

Gamers have every reason in the world to be worried, too, especially now that consoles like the Switch 2 are expected to go up in price before the end of the year and at-home PC building has become nothing more than a luxury hobby.

AI Isn’t the Only Thing Changing Gaming

It’s not just AI that’s shaping a new and uncertain era for gaming.

Over the past half-decade, outside of the global RAM shortage and flood of AI games hitting the market, we’ve also seen a significant uptick in the number of gamers turning to free-to-play games.

The F2P market is booming at the moment more than it’s ever been, largely because gamers are looking for low-cost, accessible experiences now that AI has become unavoidable.

Of course, old classics like Fortnite and PUBG are still pulling numbers, with most of them thankfully avoiding the temptation of relying on AI updates or expansions.

At the same time, free-to-play “sweepstakes casinos”, where you can win real money prizes using Sweeps Coins, have also taken off thanks to promotional deals with rapper Drake and streamers like Adin Ross.

Essentially, the gaming industry is now split into three parts: classic games people can rely on, AI “slop”, and free-to-play live service games where you essentially don’t have to spend a dime but the overall quality of the games sometimes comes up short.

It’s not the future that people predicted for gaming yet it’s exactly where the market has arrived.

Why AI is Bad for Gaming

Simply put, AI is bad for gaming.

It’s caused a huge RAM shortage worldwide, with the cost being passed onto the consumer, and job losses are only going to keep coming.

Not to mention, AI stifles creativity and will keep fueling the rise of “AI slop” and “vibe coding”, where low-effort games keep raining on the market and players (many of whom simply want a short-term buzz) eat them up.

The golden era of the mid-2000s all the way to the mid-2010s should serve as a reminder that gaming can achieve unbelievable feats, which is why PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, and other consoles from that era are spoken about with such huge nostalgia.

From we’ve seen of AI so far, it won’t come close to what gaming’s best developers produced over the past two decades and will in fact contribute to the wider industry’s decline, which the recent tanking of sales for the Xbox Series X|S, as well as the Switch 2’s disappointing performance outside of Asia, indicate is already happening.

Gamers are losing faith in video games and many of the console brands they’ve come to love and trust over the years, so getting a control over AI now and finding positive ways to use it is absolutely vital.

Otherwise, the gaming industry is in big trouble.